KINGSTON >> U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer has been able to persuade the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be flexible and hopes he can get FEMA to reimburse the city of Kingston for repairs to the Washington Avenue sinkhole, he said Tuesday.

Schumer, during a press conference in front of the sinkhole near Linderman Avenue, called on FEMA to update its policies to make sinkholes eligible for hazard-mitigation funding if a natural disaster played a role. The Kingston sinkhole opened in the spring of 2011 and has been blamed on a leaky underground stormwater tunnel, but Schumer contends it was worsened by Tropical Storms Irene and Lee in the late summer of 2011 and Superstorm Sandy in the fall of 2012.

“The city of Kingston’s been struggling to find a way to pay for the needed repairs without passing an enormous burden onto the taxpayers,” said Schumer, D-N.Y. “So we need the federal government here to help. This sinkhole was exacerbated by Irene, by Lee and by Sandy.”

Schumer noted the sinkhole was repaired shortly after it opened and was monitored for several months before Irene hit the area in August 2011. Lee followed two weeks later.

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Now the city is faced with a $7 million pricetag to fix the sinkhole while working within a $40 million municipal budget, the senator said.

The Kingston Common Council was scheduled to vote Tuesday night on resolutions authorizing Mayor Shayne Gallo to sign two separate contracts for repair work at and near the sinkhole. The council also was expected to vote on a resolution to authorize borrowing up to $3.22 million to help pay for the repair work. That money would be added to approximately $1.28 million the city previously authorized for the project and still has in reserve.

“FEMA does generally not supply money to repair sinkholes,” Schumer said. “And the agency has no record of ever doing so, even though the damage was clearly exacerbated [by the storms]. It’s not that the law says, ‘Don’t pay for sinkholes.’ It’s the way FEMA has interpreted the law, and that is the incorrect way to interpret the law, in my opinion.”

He said even though Kingston is moving forward to make the sinkhole repairs, FEMA still should reimburse the city.

The city previously asked the state Department of Transportation for sinkhole repair funding, saying the damage was made worse by Irene. The state denied that request based on what it called pre-existing conditions.

“I’ve been able to persuade FEMA to be more flexible than they used to be,” Schumer said when asked how he would get the federal agency to fund the work when the state would not. “We’ve had a lot of luck in many instances, and I hope we will here.”

He said he will talk to the head of FEMA, as well as its regional manager.

Gallo, also at the press conference, said he spoke to engineering faculty at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and that they called the sinkhole a “geological phenomenon” exacerbated by the storms. He said the city has been desperately seeking funding to move forward with the repairs but has been “struggling under the yoke” of unfunded state and federal mandates that account for 88 cents of every $1 the municipality spends.

Ulster County Executive Michael Hein agreed the sinkhole was made worse by the storms. He said he saw a manhole cover launched 30 feet into the air on Washington Avenue the day Irene hit Kingston. Hein also said the area is lucky to have Schumer fighting to get it funding.

Schumer said the $1.2 million he was able to secure for the project from the U.S. Economic Development Administration was “just a drop in the bucket.”